Pathways to practice for specialist mental health nursing careers

Description

In 2023 in consultation with CSU Office of Engagement and Enterprise the Faculty of Science and Health (FOSH) at CSU was awarded from the Department of Health and Aged Care $2 Million for a successful tender on the application titled Expanding Mental Health Placement capacity across regional, rural and remote Australia.
The Department allocated funding to shortlisted organisations to maximise value for money and ensure desired coverage across urban, regional, and remote locations within available funding. The Department proposed to fund Charles Sturt University a total of $2,000,000 for activities in the streams outlined below:
Nursing and Allied Health Stream
$2,000,000.00 for:
• 229 Nursing placements
• 78 Occupational Therapy (OT) placements
• 61 Social Work placements.
This funding was allocated to support students to attend positive mental health placements to encourage them to select mental health as a postgraduate specialty to support a reform of mental health care in Australia by developing a highly skilled and motivated workforce. This initiative is part of a ten-year National Mental Health Workforce Strategy 2022-2032, the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement aims to build a mental health and suicide prevention workforce that is culturally safe and responsive to the changing needs of the Australian community. A significant part of this strategy sets out a clear plan to attract, train, and support a diverse workforce that can meet the current and future needs of all Australians, including opportunities to grow the rural and remote workforce.
Charles Sturt University FOSH was successful in securing $2 million from this government funding for the National Mental Health Pathways to Practice Program Pilot to support nursing, occupational therapy, and social work student clinical placements across a two-year period. This pilot targets number 1 of 4 strategic program pillars embedded within the program. This pillar focuses on the goal to attract and train a mental health workforce to provide growth in capability and capacity to address critical mental health workforce shortages and meet future demand. By providing enhanced, positive, well supported clinical placements for students in mental health it aims to promote mental health careers as an attractive post-degree career choice.
As the academic lead for nursing in this successful tender, I have decided to partner with Recovery Camp to support a component of these interdisciplinary student placements. Recovery Camp is an innovative, evidence-based program that brings together people with a lived experience of mental health conditions, health students and mental health professionals to an empowerment focused immersive therapeutic recreation camp that increases consumer confidence, contributes to recovery, and reduces stigma. This form of work-integrated learning (WIL) provides a unique and distinctive placement opportunity designed and supported by Professor Lorna Moxham (University of Wollongong), Dr. Christopher Patterson, Co-founder, and co-director Recovery Camp (https://www.recoverycamp.com.au) and a team of mental health clinicians that gives students the best opportunity to learn and understand mental health and recovery from lived experience experts.
I will be working with Assoc. Prof. Samantha Jakimowicz as my mentor. I am also collaborating with Professor Lorna Moxham (University of Wollongong) and Dr Christopher Patterson from Recovery Camp for the research component of this project.

Period	2023 → …
Work for	Department of Health and Ageing, Australia
Degree of Recognition	National